José María Sicilia

JOSE MARIA SICILIA (Madrid, 1954).
S/t, 1990.
Mixed media (resin and pigments) on paper mounted on dibon.
Presents on the back label of the Pierre Huber Gallery.
Measurements: 52 x 70 cm; 76 x 93 cm (frame).
This work made in 1990 with resin and pigments is an eloquent example of the artist's plastic research on materiality, light and trace. Sicilia, one of the most relevant figures of the generation of the eighties in Spain, has developed a visual language that oscillates between lyrical abstraction and the almost scientific exploration of natural processes.
In this piece, the support becomes the true protagonist: the surface is covered with glazes and irregular textures reminiscent of erosion or crystallization processes. The chromatic range, dominated by whites and beiges, reinforces the silent and contemplative character of the work, evoking the sensation of something organic and mineral at the same time. The large central stain, with its irregular outline and barely perceptible relief, appears as a void or a form in suspension, inviting the eye to pause and decipher its ambiguous nature.
The use of resin provides a translucent quality that allows to play with light, creating effects of depth and time stopped. In this way, Sicilia establishes a dialogue between the visible and the hidden.
Sicilia began his studies at the School of Fine Arts in Madrid, but in 1980 he abandoned them and moved to live in Paris. Two years later he presented his first solo exhibition, in a style in line with the neo-expressionism then fashionable in Europe. Subsequently, it was the various objects of the everyday world that became the protagonists of his works. Vacuum cleaners, irons, scissors, buckets, etc., will be the center of a new language in which Sicilia will grant a greater and progressive importance to the treatment of textures. His work is organized in series on still lifes, landscapes and, the best known, on the Bastille and Aligre neighborhoods, where he himself lives and works. It was in the mid-eighties when his work reached a great national and international projection. In 1986 he presented at the Blum Helman Gallery in New York a group of works that showed a strong purification of the previous style, towards an abstract painting in which he progressively eliminated any formal reference. This new style is reflected in the series "Tulips" and "Flowers". In the nineties this reductionist aesthetic will affect the chromatic range, leaving the forms suggested by the reflection of light on the surface. A new material treatment of subtle poetic resonance, based on waxes that let floral themes slightly transparent, brings color back to an already fully consecrated work. José María Sicilia has been awarded the National Prize for Plastic Arts (1989), and is represented in the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the MOMA and the Guggenheim in New York and the CAPC in Bordeaux, among many other art centers and museums.